Fresh Fish 8/FreshFishVol8-CD1.bin/useful/reviews/hardware/graphics/dctv

Internet Message Format | 1992-05-06 | 18KB

From: Brian C. Wright <[e-mail]>
Organization: East Texas State University, Commerce, Texas.
Subject: REVIEW: DCTV 1.0c
Keywords: hardware, graphics, video
Path: menudo.uh.edu
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
Reply-To: Brian C. Wright <[e-mail]>

This is a review of version 1.0c DCTV (Digital Composite Television)
produced by Digital Creations.  In the package comes 4 disks, manual, and
external DCTV box.  Included on the disks comes a paint system,
digitizer/image processor, and DCTV->IFF conversion software and
registration card.  There are a few utilities and 2 disks of images.  My
DCTV is currently running on an A3000/16 with four megabytes (two chip,
two fast) running AmigaDOS 2.04 KS version 37.175.  In general, the system
is quite nice and quite worth the money.


** Requirements and specifications:

DCTV requires at minimum one megabyte of memory.  It uses the 23 pin RGB
port and the parallel port for digitizing.  DCTV has a maximum resolution
of 768x432 in full NTSC color at the present (unless superbitmaps are
implemented).  DCTV's lowest resolution is 640x200.  It uses 3 and 4
bitplane high resolution interlace or non-interlace screens for display.
The DCTV box decodes these images into full NTSC color.  If you have a hard
disk, you will be a lot happier, although you can use floppies.  If you
intend on saving 24 bit ILBM images, be prepared to have about 600-800k
free per image.  Without the DCTV-RGB adapter, genlock use with DCTV is not
possible.  The software will run on both 1.3 and 2.04 (KS 37.175).  It will
also run on a 68000 as well as 68030 with speed improvement.

** Introduction

Since the day I had placed my order for DCTV, I had been anxiously waiting
for it to arrive.  I had always been waiting for the day to have greater
than 4096 colors (other than Dynamic HiRes).  Well, DCTV is no
disappointment above and beyond its few flaws.  I had already used a DCTV
over at a friend's previous to my order.  I didn't really have any idea of
the full capabilities of this system.  To my surprise, I had *REALLY*
underestimated it.

I removed the very professionally printed outer sleeve of the box and
opened it to find a parts list, a plastic wrapped DCTV box, an envelope
containing four disks (again with the professionally printed labels), and a
very nicely printed spiral bound manual.  I immediately removed the
contents of the box and proceeded to hook the system up.  It may have taken
me all of 10 minutes to connect it up.  The software took a little more
time than that to copy over to the hard disk.  I would have used the
supplied installation script, but my multiple assign to FONTS: would have
caused problems (my current system disk is full and the fonts would have
been copied there).  DCTV requires its DCTV.font in the FONTS: directory
and the iffparse.library in LIBS: before the system will run.  For maximum
functionality of the system, it would be best to have two monitors for
DCTV.  One monitor for your DCTV display and one for your RGB output for
Workbench.  I run my system using my 1950 for WorkBench and my 1080 for the
DCTV.  DCTV is stated to run on systems with one megabyte of memory, though
if you intend to do heavy DCTV work, plan on getting more.  After using the
system for a while on my three magabyte machine, the system runs out of
memory occasionally.  I would have to say that the minimum one megabyte
system would only barely allow it function.  To use the digitizer, you must
sacrifice your parallel port (quite usual for a digitizer).  Keep in mind
that I haven't tested everything on the painting system out yet.  I am
still in the process of learning it.

I shall divide the software review into three sections.  This will then be
followed by some remarks about hardware and final thoughts.  Three programs
are included in the DCTV package: DCTVProc, DCTVPaint and Convert.  The
DCTV executable is just DCTVProc, DCTVPaint and Convert combined.
DCTVPaint and DCTVProc (with Convert included) are also available as
smaller executables, but lack the integration of the DCTV executable.

When you first run DCTV, the first screen that pops up is an Amiga 640x200
screen.  From this screen, you can pick your destination: options,
digitize, paint or convert.  If you choose process/digitize or paint, you
will get a green sort of screen, this is your queue to switch to a
composite signal.  Once in composite, the green screen will turn grey with
a 3D look.  You can now start viewing, painting or digitizing.

--------------------------------SOFTWARE---------------------------------

** DCTVPaint:

DCTVPaint is the NTSC color painting system for DCTV.  This paint system is
quite complete, but has a few missing features and some rather unobvious
functions that should be made obvious.  The one thing that DCTV is
completely lacking is an UNDO feature.  This isn't to say they didn't
provide ANY means for undoing.  There is a fast load and fast save feature
that will quickly save/load a file (and it is pretty fast too) to/from any
disk device.  With this function you can quickly save/load a file for an
undo-like action.  I'd have rather seen a true UNDO, though.

Another function that should be readily and easily available is the CLEAR
SCREEN function.  It isn't easy to find or easily accessible.  You have to
click shift-clear (when the color button is depressed).  Also, to grab a
color from the screen you shift-click onto the image area and it will grab
the color.  To put the color in a well, you shift-click in the well.

As for the tools available to you, you have all the standard features one
would expect: circle/elipse, arc, line, box, and dots.  All of these can be
filled or not filled depending on whether you depress the fill button. My
favorite feature of this paint system is the stencil operation.  It is very
very nice.  You can create a stencil around anything using any tool just as
you would to paint.  You can delete or add to the stencil.  Then when
finished, pick your favorite operation (fill box, gradient, etc) and cover
your stencil.  The stencil reminds me quite a bit of the way real frisket
works.  You can save your stencils as well.

Some other features of this include warping of images around shapes
(circles, squares, freehand shapes, etc), gradient fills, radial gradient
fills, linear gradient fills, and horizontal and vertical gradient fills.
You can pick your colors from any of 16.7 million colors (256 shades per
red, green and blue).  There are also pattern fills which include tiles,
wallpaper and brick.

Other tools include rubthru, blend shade, water (water color effects?),
smooth, filter and airbrush.  Since there are many combinations of possible
effects that can be had with this paint system, I haven't tried every
possible combination yet.  Overlaying transparent tints or brushes is done
very well.

There is a cut/paste tool for brushes.  Since the cut brushes are limited
only to being moved and pasted, real-time drawing with a cut brush can't be
done.  Resizing, flipping and saving the brush is possible.

When the the amount of available memory becomes low, the software may or may
not cut a brush.  If it can't cut the brush, you don't get a requester.
You don't get anything.  The busy pointer goes away and that's it.  Other
operations tell you if there isn't enough memory for the operation.
Cutting a brush shouldn't be any different.

On the paint screen you have 36 color wells.  You can save these palettes
if you need to.  You can put any color in any of these wells without the
restrictions of HAM or 32 color palettes.

You may have up to two buffers open at once.  This is how the rubthru
works.  Having two buffers open at once requires much more memory than just
one buffer.  Two interlace overscan images in the buffers can easily fill
my memory sufficiently to keep me from digitizing in high quality or
cutting a brush.  I usually have about three megabytes free, sometimes
less.  When running something as memory hungry as this I usually don't run
anything else.

There is a text brush feature.  You can pi